A Common Past, An Uncommon Bond

Jamie Palmer found a mentor in Lauren Ziadie, who knows exactly how far he’s traveled, from his homeland in Jamaica, where he planted corn with his beloved grandfather, to a job on Morgan Stanley’s Wealth Management team.

Not long ago, when Jamie Palmer worked at Morgan Stanley headquarters in Manhattan, he would sometimes walk into the conference room just to drink in the view of Times Square. “It’s on the 22nd floor, and I would just look out and see all these buildings. And I’d say: "Wow, I can’t believe where I am right now.”

For Jamie, now a member of the Wealth Management Segment Sales and Engagement team based in Purchase, NY, it was a long way from his old neighborhood in Jamaica, a place that molded him into who he is and one where his grandfather taught him to work hard and take pride in a job well done. “I used to help [him] tie the goats or plant corn.”

“My life’s transformed completely,” he tells his mentor Lauren Ziadie, an Executive Director in Wealth Management and a fellow Jamaican, in this conversation captured by StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to record, preserve, and share the stories of people from all backgrounds.

The journey wasn’t easy. Jamie’s mother, who worked in the U.S. to support her family, eventually brought them over to join her. “I missed my grandparents, because I’d always been with them, and all my friends. It got harder and harder because I didn’t start doing anything right away,” Jamie recalls.

“Then things fell in place,” in no small part because of “some people in my life who just sort of showed up and helped,” he says.

Like Lauren. “It’s been a very comfortable relationship because we have that similar foundation,” she says. That shared sense of community and history—the importance of music and church in Jamaican life, for example—can sometimes make all the difference. Have a listen.